Seventeenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Contemporary detective fiction by select Spanish authors includes a variety of forms of the novela negra or crime novel tradition, yet it also shares a common thread of critical commentary of a rapidly transforming society since the 1980s. While both participating in and disrupting the otherwise almost exclusively male dominated literary niche, Alicia Giménez Bartlett makes a singular contribution to the genre. Whether the typical Spanish narrator-protagonist is defined as a private detective such as Manuel Vázquez Montalbán’s legendary Pepe Carvalho, or as the picaresque, anonymous amateur detective in Eduardo Mendoza’s series spanning five novels from El misterio de la cripta embrujada (1978) to El secreto de la modelo extraviada (2015), both represent essentially traditional figures in Spain’s patriarchal structures of authority. In contrast, Petra Delicado, the female national police inspector based in Barcelona who is the protagonist of the eleven novels in the series by Giménez Bartlett occupies a unique position from which to observe and critique the evolving political, social, legal, and gender dynamics of power. Delicado inhabits a contradictory space: as a (female) outsider in the National Police yet (professional) insider in the criminal justice system; as a reluctant feminist obliged to call out her colleagues’ sexist assumptions and resulting (mis)perceptions of the crimes, victims, and suspects they encounter, but who also resists conforming to imposed expectations; and as a high-ranking professional whose personal life is impacted by the nature and demands of her work. From this contested space Delicado challenges existing structural power dynamics.